Tears For The Dragon Ch. 01

While Tibor munched on his own meal, Emsari took about thirty seconds to eat hers. Or, more accurately, devour hers. He felt a little bit of unease as he watched her bite off huge portions of boar-meat and swallow them whole. Her mouth and throat expanded without any evident effort as those chunks went down her gullet. After most of the meat was gone, she simply swallowed the bones like a man slurping up noodles.

The dragon patted her stomach in satisfaction. "That's much better. Thirty-five years of sleep leaves quite a little hole in the belly. It was a good thing for Vilmos that I've sworn off eating humans." She gave Tibor a wink.

He smiled nervously in return and continued eating. He was seated on one of the lounges in the forward section of the main room while Emsari was stretched out in front of him. "I'm sorry we woke you up," he said between his own bites.

She gave a very human-looking shrug. "It's not a problem. If it hadn't been you, it would have been one of the local farmers with a problem that needed solving."

He nearly swallowed a piece of sausage the wrong way. "You have dealings with the locals?"

Emsari gave a puzzled look. "Of course. Why else would I leave my front door open? They usually come by if somebody is deathly ill. I have some facility with healing magic, as you now know. Since they don't have much in the way of gold, they pay me with game or livestock." She patted her stomach again as her lips peeled back in a leer. "Or if they're pleasing to the eye, I might ask them to stay for a few days so that I may, heh, 'entertain' them and recharge myself."

Tibor pondered the arrangement. "The legends always said that dragons demanded tribute from those around them. But it sounds more like a quid-pro-quo situation."

"Of course," she replied. The dragon sat up and stretched her arms up and wings out, giving Tibor an eyeful of her lovely chest. He quickly pulled his eyes back down to his meal. "Our lifespan is such that we try to take the long view," she continued. "Dealing fairly with others always works out better in the long run than simply using force."

Tibor shook his head. "I wish more humans had your outlook," he muttered. He looked up to see her regarding him curiously.

The dragon tilted her head. "So. You know human ward magic, and have a good command of the Second Sight. You also have at least some education, judging by what you knew about my kind. I wonder...what brings a student from one of the southern universities this far north? And working as a thief, no less."

"I'm..." not a thief, he almost said. But he let it pass. "You're right. I was a student, in the University of Vasalat."

"In the capital itself? My, my. Why did you leave? Did you get bored, or sleep with the wrong man's woman? I kind of hope it's the latter."

"Neither. I'm a wanted man in Vasalat, let's leave it at that. If I was to show my face in that city, I'd be arrested on the spot. My guts would be decorating the city walls before nightfall."

"Oooh, a man on the run. How romantic." Somehow he didn't mind the dragon's mild teasing. It was as if she knew it was painful for him to talk about it, and so she made jokes to lighten the mood. "But, my dear guest, I'm afraid that I'm not going to settle for the mysterious past nonsense. Why are you a wanted man in the capital?"

He took a sip of water. "I tried to kill someone. I hit them with a piece of firewood."

"Hmm. That seems a little impulsive and violent for one such as you."

"I was...not thinking straight at the time."

The following pause stretched out. Tibor was not going to volunteer any information, not about that.

Emsari stared at him for a long time with narrowed eyes. Then she gave another shrug and said "Very well, I am patient."

Then she turned and padded away on all fours. "Now follow me, please. You have a choice to make."

__________________________________________________________

One of the other exits from the dragon's bedchamber led to a wide corridor with many doors along its length. At the end of the corridor was a stout oaken door. The door was latched securely with a thick iron bar across it. That bar looked heavy enough that Tibor wasn't sure if he could lift it.

"This is a storage room that I'm not using at the moment," explained Emsari. "It was the best place I had to stash him."

Tibor stood next to and a little behind the wyrm while she lifted the bar off of the door with one hand and casually set it aside. His heart beat a little faster as she swung the door open.

The light streamed into the dark interior of the large room and lit upon Vilmos. The mercenary was crumpled against the far wall, looking filthy and disheveled. He'd re-donned his ruined trousers. There was a jug of water next to him and a chamberpot in the furthest corner.

The mercenary flinched back from the light and threw his hands over his face. "No, no, no, please, not again..." he whimpered.

Emsari drew herself taller. With lightning suddenness, her entire demeanor had changed. She was no longer the friendly and gently teasing dragon that Tibor had known. She was now a cold and ancient presence, an entity that was thousands of years old.

"Silence, cur," she said.

His voice shut off.

"Lower your arms."

Vilmos complied. Tibor was shocked at how haggard the man looked. Yes, he'd been shut in a dark closet for a day. But the mercenary looked ten years older. He suspected that Emsari had drawn more from him than just his seed. His eyes were red-rimmed and wide with fear as he stared at Emsari. Then his gaze lit upon Tibor standing beside her.

The mercenary's face contorted into a snarl. "You traitorous bastard-!"

"I. Said. Silence." Emsari's voice was like a leaden weight slamming into the earth. Vilmos' tirade shut off and he shrank back as if trying to press himself through the wall.

Her voice sounded again. "Stand up."

Vilmos stood. One of his legs trembled slightly. Then nothing on him trembled as he was suddenly thrown against the wall by an invisible force. His arms and legs were spread out, forming a human star. His eyes bulged with terror, but he didn't yell.

Emsari turned regally to Tibor. "This man hath spilled blood in the lair of a dragon. If this man hadst killed thee, then his sentence would be clear. Death." She looked over at Vilmos like something disgusting she'd found under a log. "A slow death."

She nodded to the young man. "However, as thou art living then ancient draconic law states that the choice of life or death is thine, as thou art the aggrieved party."

Before Tibor could blink, there was a dagger in one of Emsari's hands. She held it out handle-first towards him. "Thou may take his life, if thou so desires."

Almost in a daze, Tibor reached out and took hold of the dagger. He turned and marched into the storage room. Vilmos' eyes were fixated on the dagger blade, then he looked up into Tibor's level gaze.

"I'm making a guess, Vilmos," said Tibor. He was amazed at how calm and composed he sounded. He reached out and set the point of the dagger against the mercenary's throat. Vilmos gave a little mewl, but didn't say anything.

Tibor continued. "I'm guessing that you hit me in the head to shut me up. But then I had another notion. Maybe you also thought that I would make a tasty snack for any angry wyrm in the vicinity. Letting her eat me would help you make good on your escape, eh?" He rotated the dagger and saw a tiny drop of blood form where its point rested on Vilmos' neck. "Does that sound about right?"

"I wasn't-"

"DON'T LIE TO ME!" roared Tibor. "We mages can SMELL lies. Our sense of smell is almost as good as that of our draconic brethren."

It might have been his imagination, but he thought he heard the faintest snicker from behind him.

Vilmos was now looking just as frightened of Tibor as he was of the dragon looming in the doorway.

"I could bleed you out like a hog," said Tibor. "And I promise that I would sleep well afterwards. I could do to you what you were going to do to me. I'm in the position of strength now, and you can't stop me. Just like I couldn't stop you from trying to kill me yesterday."

Tibor let out a breath, and stepped back. The bead of red on Vilmos' neck stood out starkly against the mercenary's ashen skin.

"Fortunately for you, I'm not like you," said the mage.

Vilmos gave a little sob of relief.

"Thou hast chosen, then?" asked Emsari from behind him.

"Yes," replied Tibor. "I'm not killing this man."

"So be it." Her voice sounded intrigued.

Tibor heard her tramp into the room, and he stepped aside to make way for her bulk. Vilmos' relieved look turned to fear again as one of her hands reached towards his chest. Emsari chanted a little in her snakelike language, and Tibor could see a faint glow from beneath the mercenary's skin in the center of his chest.

The wyrm stepped back and looked smug. "Thou art free to go." The force holding Vilmos to the wall released him, and he stumbled and nearly fell. He straightened up and looked at her with fearful suspicion.

"What did you do to me?" Vilmos growled.

Emsari relaxed, and was now back in her 'informal' persona. She sat back and crossed her arms. "Not much. I just wrapped a little ward spell around your heart. Just to keep you from going and telling anyone about me or Tibor."

"What?"

She gave a little mock sigh of regret. "Unfortunately, there isn't much space on a ward that small. I couldn't make it very discriminating. So let me tell you how it works. If you ever say aloud or write out the words 'gold', 'wyrm', 'dragon', 'Tibor', or 'lair', then that ward will constrict. It will burst your heart like a stepped-on grape."

"No!" Vilmos looked stricken.

Her sharp-toothed smile widened. "Oh, yes. You'll be dead before you hit the ground. It's well past time that you learn to watch what you say, my violent idiot. Oh, and the ward will also trigger if you come within three miles of my lair. That portion of the spell will become fully active in one hour...so I suggest you get moving."

She moved to the side and pointed at the open door. "I trust you know the way out. The tunnel door will be open long enough for you to pass."

Vilmos spared a moment to shoot a poisonous glance at Tibor, then ran out the door.

Emsari and Tibor followed at a leisurely pace after him, and watched him all but sprint up the stairs towards the exit.

"He's moving quite well," said Emsari smugly as he departed. "I guess I didn't take that much out of him, eh?"

Tibor rubbed the back of his neck nervously. He didn't like being reminded of what she'd done to the man. "I guess not. I...I just hope I did the right thing."

She turned towards him. Her smug smile faded a bit. "I admit that you intrigue me, my little thief. You admit that you once tried to kill a man with an improvised club. And yet, when presented with the opportunity to dispose of a man who would not have hesitated in the slightest to kill you, you show mercy."

"I'm not a thief." He dropped his hand. "Or a killer."

Emsari tramped closer. "We are all killers, when pushed far enough." Her snout approached his nose as she held his gaze. "Be assured that I do not judge you for either your violence or your mercy. I have spilled more blood than you can imagine. Not all of it was human, and much of it I regret." She leaned back and smiled. "But enough of that. Have a seat. I should look you over and make sure you are healing properly."

The wyrm examined his scalp again and looked deep into his eyes, then had him squeeze her finger with each of his hands as hard as he could. "Very good," she said at the end. "I think another day and we can safely say that you are out of danger." She lifted one brow. "And then you have another choice to make."

Tibor was pretty certain what that choice would be. Tomorrow would be the end of his three allotted days as her guest. If he was to stay longer, then she would want payment. And from what she'd said previously, he was sure that payment would be in the form of her 'milking' him for his sexual energy.

He was honestly torn. If he stayed, he could learn more of magic in a few months than he could with years of university training. That might give him the edge he needed against the vast odds against him. But the payment required...

Tibor had debased himself professionally. But he wasn't sure if he was willing to debase himself personally. He had never lain with a woman after Natalia's death. Even on some particularly lonely nights, when he could hear the calls of the prostitutes in the alleyways outside, he had kept himself in check.

To distract his musings, he motioned at one of the huge wall of books nearby. "Well, until tomorrow do you mind if I look through your library?"

She smiled and swept one muscled arm towards them. "Please do. Books are meant to be read, after all."

Tibor all but ran over to the shelves. He took a deep breath and began to scan the spines presented to him, starting with the top rows. They were high enough that he had to crane his neck up to read them. Many of them were known to him from his education, but there were also many gems scattered here and there.

"A first edition Pluogh?" he said with glee. "I thought there were only three of these in existence." He carefully pulled down the leather-bound tome and opened it, reveling in the musty smell of old vellum. He read through it. "This has some of the first theorems of magic." He looked up at Emsari, who was watching him with obvious amusement. "Well, the first of human magic at least."

He kept going, happily whiling away the hours. Emsari joined him in reading. Her large hands were surprisingly dextrous as she paged through even the smaller books. Tibor kept a mental inventory of what was here. There were books that had been hinted of in other, earlier works, books that had been lost to time. The knowledge here was, to him, worth more than the dragon's glittering hoard. As he kept reading, his joy in discovery was matched with an equally large despair. There was so much here to learn. Both his inquisitive nature and his oath of vengeance demanded that he stay. But the fee for staying...was it too high?

And then, late in the afternoon, he chanced upon a slim volume almost lost in between two larger books. He pulled it out with a sense of dread and regarded the cover.

"A Philosophical Treatise on the Nature of Sapient Beings," he said aloud. "By Ivorson."

Tibor was quite surprised at the white-hot fury that rose in him as he looked at the book. The young man had heard the saying that time healed all wounds, but he knew that it was nonsense. What he had lost kept catching him by surprise, over and over again. Not a week went by without hearing someone's voice, catching a floral scent on the breeze, or seeing the flash of a familiar-looking dress...something would inevitably remind him of Natalia. Ordinarily it would simply cause him pain. But seeing this book, in front of him now...now, he did not feel pain. He felt filled with a rage hot enough to burn the world to ashes.

"I read that a while back," said Emsari absently. She was curled up beside him and casually reading her own book. "I found it a little dry."

Tibor felt a bitter laugh bubble up from deep within him, and he let it out. Emsari looked up curiously, and saw something in his face that actually made the powerful dragon flinch away from him.

He grinned at her without humor as he held up the volume. "You should be careful, my dear," he said. "This is a very dangerous book. The King has decreed it to be so. You could be in serious trouble if you get caught with this in your possession." He laughed again, louder this time, until he put his hand over his mouth. Tibor breathed deep, calling on his mental discipline to stop himself from acting out like this.

He felt Emsari's hand gently clasp his shoulder. "What happened to her? To Natalia?"

Tibor looked up. "How...how did you know her name?" Was this some kind of draconic mind-reading magic?

She smiled sadly. "You talk in your sleep."

"Oh." He felt spent, his titanic rage now gone. Tibor looked down at the book and opened it, then leafed through the pages automatically until he found the passage near the end that he was looking for. He cleared his throat and began to read:

"And thus, having established the underlying factors that make a sapient being capable of self-awareness, we see that such beings are also capable of self-determination. Therefore it should be obvious that the natural state of such beings is when they are allowed to find their own way. Whether such a being is human, draconic, gnomish, or even ogrish makes no difference to the final and logical end result. The most just and fair society is one that allows such peoples the most self-determination and freedom. Any regime which relies primarily on force or coercion must therefore be thought of as against the natural order of things and regarded as anathema by any rational being."

He shut the book with a snap and looked back up at the dragon with red-rimmed eyes. "That's all it takes. A few little sentences among so much dry philosophy, and that's enough to get it declared a seditious book." Tibor gently set the book back on the shelf.

Emsari gently squeezed his shoulder as he stared beyond the books, back into his own past. "Metternich," he said finally. "King Bognar's chief rat. He ran all the spy networks, had informants everywhere in the universities. They couldn't shut down the schools, they make too much money for the regime. But they were determined to shut down any dangerous ideas." Tibor set a hand on the shelf in front of him. "They kept adding books to the proscribed list. Anything that gave the merest hint that a king might be fallible or unjust. Anything that said he might not actually rule by divine right from the Goddess."

He gave a bitter laugh. "There were so many titles on the list that it became hard to keep track of them. I don't know how Metternich found out, maybe one of his informants tattled on her or it was just a random search. But his thugs went through Natalia's books and found that she had a copy of Ivorson. She was arrested on the spot."

The dragon still said nothing, but there was a comforting feel to that silence. Tibor scrubbed at his eyes with one hand. "The really horrible thing was, I had bought her that book a few years prior, before it became proscribed. She'd said she wanted to read it, so I bought it for her birthday. I don't even know if she'd gotten around to reading it yet." He smiled sadly. "She was a bit of a pack-rat when it came to books."

"And so you approached Metternich," said Emsari. "You tried to reason with him."

Tibor nodded. "I knew of a tavern he sometimes went to, and I got lucky." He drew in a deep, ragged breath. "He was there, so I went in with hat in hand. No weapons, no spells prepared. His bodyguard searched me and let me approach. He sat there pleased as a cat with cream, sipping his ale while I pleaded for the life of my fiance."

The dragon's hand gave his shoulder another gentle squeeze. "I know his type very well," she said softly. "I'm guessing that he didn't listen."

Tibor shook his head. "He had this damned little smile on his face the whole time I was talking. Like I was some kind of performing monkey. Finally he just said, 'Examples have to be made. Both of buyers and readers.' I knew that meant that I was going to be arrested as well for buying her the book. I could see his shoulder twitch, and I knew that meant he was about to signal his bodyguards."

The mage took another ragged breath. "I wasn't thinking, really. All that was in my mind was to stop him making that signal. If I was arrested, then Natalia had no chance of rescue. There was a fireplace next to his table, with some wood piled beside it. The pile was within my reach. I grabbed a piece of hickory and smashed it into his right shoulder."